Extinction Game

by Gary Gibson

  Oskar dropped down next to Lucky, and whistled sharply. Lucky responded by settling onto her haunches and regarding her master attentively. Under any other circumstances, I’d have been impressed.

  ‘The car,’ said Nadia, her voice scratchy. ‘Need to get it upright.’

  ‘The damn thing’s trashed,’ said Oskar, his voice terse. ‘Besides, look over there.’

  I followed the direction of his gaze, to where a number of bee-brains had come stumbling around the far corner of the street, attracted, perhaps, by the noise and commotion. I realized with a terrible sinking sensation that we had little choice but to abandon our vehicle.

  Oskar rested his rifle on top of the SUV and began firing towards the bee-brains. Nadia, despite the blood on her forehead and what may have well been an incipient concussion, did the same – as did I, steadying my breathing before picking a target and pulling the trigger.

  Bodies fell as the bullets slammed into the heads and chests of the approaching bee-brains. I hastily reloaded and started firing again.

  A dark brown shape shot past me and towards the creatures. Oskar’s hound leaped towards a bee-brain, her enormous jaws clamping around the creature’s throat. The bee-brain collapsed to its knees, blood pumping from its neck. Lucky had already moved on to savage another of the creatures.

  ‘Stop,’ said Nadia, sounding breathless. More than a dozen bodies lay scattered. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here before any more come.’

  ‘What about our supplies?’ I asked, nodding at the SUV. ‘Shouldn’t we get them out of there?’

  ‘No,’ said Nadia. ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘I need just one thing,’ said Oskar, half-pulling himself back inside the SUV before Nadia had a chance to protest. He resurfaced a moment later with a black canvas bag.

  ‘Through there,’ he said, slinging the bag over one shoulder and nodding towards a nearby vacant doorway.

  ‘In there?’ exclaimed Nadia. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘River’s on the other side,’ he said. ‘No time to argue. Just follow me!’

  He disappeared inside the doorway without another word, Lucky bounding after him. I looked at Nadia and she shrugged helplessly before following him.

  I ran after them both, finding myself inside what must have been a very upmarket mall in its time. Discoloured posters advertising perfumes drooped from the walls, while glass-covered counters on all sides still contained rows of tiny, elegant-looking bottles.

  Oskar came to a halt and unzipped the bag before extracting something flat and oblong. He fixed it to the wall just beside the entrance, then tapped at a digital readout affixed to it. Some kind of explosive, I realized.

  ‘Move,’ Oskar screamed, and ran deeper into the building, Lucky in his wake.

  I didn’t need any further persuasion. Nadia kept pace with me as we ran towards the sunlight coming through an open door on the far side of the mall. Oskar swerved behind an escalator and pulled Lucky down beside him, and both myself and Nadia moved to join him.

  I had barely got behind cover when the air filled with a terrible thunder, the whole building shaking. Dense, choking dust filled the air, while what sounded like a couple of tons of glass came crashing down all around us.

  I stood back up and peered through thick clouds of dust. All that remained of the entrance was a pile of rubble, blocking the bee-brains from following us.

  Within seconds we emerged from the far side of the building and onto another street. I could see the banks of the Pinheiros, just past a row of warehouses parallel to it.

  We ran, and kept running, until my lungs burned and my legs ached, but the thought of the creatures behind us was more than enough to keep me going regardless. It felt as if we’d run a hell of a long way before we began to slow down, but even then we kept walking at a brisk pace, darting wary glances at the shadows and street corners around us as we went.

  I looked up and saw that the sun was well past its zenith. The plan, I recalled, had been to rendezvous with the others by nightfall at the latest.

  Nadia finally came to a halt, bending over and putting her hands on her knees. Oskar collapsed to the ground beside her, rolling onto his back. I sank down onto a concrete bollard by the side of the road and looked around.

  ‘I don’t think anything’s following us,’ Nadia finally said, ‘but it’s going to be dark in a couple of hours.’ She pushed her hair back from her face and looked at me. ‘The bee-brains don’t hang around after dark.’

  ‘So we’re safe.’

  ‘Nope.’ She shook her head. ‘Once it’s dark, we have to deal with the night patrol.’

  ‘The what?’ I said. Winifred had used the term earlier, but hadn’t explained it.

  Nadia shook her head, panting. ‘All you need to know,’ she said, ‘is that however bad you think the bee-brains are, the night patrol is worse. Pray we don’t run into one.’

  ‘What now?’ asked Oskar, finally sitting up.

  ‘What else can we do but walk?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘The farther we get from the Hive, the better chance we have of surviving after dark.’

  Oskar nodded up at the darkening sky. ‘I’ve been keeping my eyes out for the recon drones,’ he said. ‘They should be looking for us, but I haven’t seen a damn thing since before we ran into trouble.’

  ‘Well, I guess it’s stating the obvious to say something’s gone very badly wrong,’ said Nadia. ‘C’mon,’ she said, taking a weary step forwards. ‘We walk, or we die.’

  We were headed towards a second bridge beyond the one that had been our original destination, spanning the river some way off in the distance. ‘That’s one too many fuck-ups,’ said Oskar. ‘I’ve had it with this shit. No more fucking missions until they guarantee our safety.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you managed to keep hold of the flare gun?’ asked Nadia.

  ‘No,’ said Oskar miserably. ‘It fell under the vehicle when we crashed.’

  We made steady progress over the next two hours, without further encounters. The Hive began to recede into the distance until I began to believe we had some chance of making it back across the city alive. Nadia called another halt just as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, the undersides of the clouds streaked with red.

  Oskar shook his head. ‘We can’t afford to stop. We’re too vulnerable as it is.’

  ‘If we don’t rest up, even just for a couple of minutes,’ Nadia pointed out, ‘we’ll be too exhausted if we run into any more trouble.’ She reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic bottle half-full of water, taking a sip from it before passing it to me. ‘Easy with that,’ she said. ‘The rest is back in the SUV.’

  The water tasted like sunlight as it flowed down my throat, and I had to fight the urge to drink it all down at once. I was ravenously hungry. I reluctantly passed the remaining water over to Oskar, and I watched him give most of his share to Lucky.

  ‘Casey mentioned that the bee-brains stick to specific paths,’ I said. ‘They weren’t supposed to be where we found them, were they?’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Oskar grumbled.

  ‘I guess we’re going to have to rethink what we know,’ said Nadia.

  ‘I think we were jinxed,’ growled Oskar, giving me a foul look.

  ‘I already told you to shut the hell up,’ Nadia barked.

  ‘Yeah, I remember,’ he said, his tone sardonic. ‘You said you were going to make me walk the rest of the way back.’

  She glared at him, but didn’t say anything more.

  ‘Since we’re here,’ I said, ‘maybe this would be a good time to tell me what the hell a “night patrol” is.’

  Nadia regarded me through a fringe of hair that had fallen across her face. ‘They’re not quite the same as regular bee-brains,’ she explained. ‘They patrol the borders between different Hives, always after dark. Sometimes patrols from different Hives attack or kill each other. Also, unlike the regular bee-brains, they aren’t restricted to scent-marke
d paths.’ She regarded me darkly. ‘That’s what makes them particularly dangerous – they go wherever the hell they like.’

  ‘So why are the Hives so antagonistic towards each other?’

  ‘Mostly,’ she said, ‘they fight over resources.’

  ‘If they do that, doesn’t that imply there’s some kind of intelligence at work?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first to ask that same question. Actual bees are pretty organized, but they don’t have anything like human intelligence.’

  ‘So you’re saying . . .’

  ‘It’s an instinctive thing. No intelligence involved, or so Winifred tells me. She’s the one who spent time studying the damn things. They caught one and took it apart, said they found that all the parts of the brain dealing with higher functions had essentially rotted away.’ She shuddered visibly. ‘Ask her for the gory details when we get back.’

  ‘Anything else I should know?’ I asked dryly.

  ‘Lots,’ Nadia replied, ‘but I figure you’re under enough stress already as it is.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘back when we were stuck in those vaults, running away from a lava flow, you told me it wasn’t always going to be like this.’

  Something in the look she gave me kept me from saying anything more.

  TEN

  We soon got moving again. I smoothed the map out as we walked, studying it as best as I could in the day’s fading light, until I was pretty sure where we were. We were still walking parallel to the river, and well on our way to the bridge we had been aiming for. I figured we didn’t have more than another twenty minutes of walking before we reached it, and the farther the Hive slipped behind us, the safer I felt.

  Back when I had been stuck on my own alternate with no hope of rescue, I had learned fast to pay attention, never to let my mind drift so far that I would fail to notice the sound of wild dogs hunting me. The one time I had let my attention slip, when Yuichi and the others had hunted me across the fields and through the woods, I had come close to dying. So when I heard a faint buzzing, like that of insects, I was immediately aware of it. The sound came again, as if something had passed close by my ear.

  I looked ahead of us, in the direction of the bridge, to where Lucky had run ahead. I saw that she had come to an absolute standstill just five or six metres in front of us, her body trembling with suppressed energy.

  I came to a halt, and saw that Nadia and Oskar had both done the same. I felt suddenly, acutely aware of every shadow, every breeze, every sound around us.

  Up ahead, the sun slipped down behind the ruins of an office building, and the darkness grew.

  ‘Night patrol,’ said Oskar, his voice low as he slipped his rifle from his shoulder.

  Beside me, Nadia took the safety off her own weapon.

  I looked around, but all I could see were the silhouettes of warehouses on either side of us.

  ‘Hear anything?’ asked Nadia. She spoke quietly, but her voice seemed to reverberate from the walls around us.

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Oskar. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘I definitely heard a buzzing,’ said Nadia. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  She glanced towards the river. ‘If there’s too many of them, head for the water and try and swim across.’

  As if on cue, a figure emerged from the alley between two warehouses on our right. It was naked, with a sunken belly and a chest coated with thick grey hair. There was, I saw, something wrong with its head. Its skull was distended in such a way that the mouth was drawn wide in a terrifying, inhuman grimace.

  ‘There should be more than one,’ said Nadia, sounding surprisingly calm. ‘Anyone see the rest?’

  ‘Behind us,’ I said, looking over my shoulder.

  They had emerged from the shadows and alleyways in their dozens. Many, though not all, had the same strange, distended features as the one blocking our way ahead.

  Oskar brought his rifle up and fired over Lucky’s head, at the first creature we had seen. It staggered back as the bullets tore into its body, and it collapsed without a sound.

  Then it did something I knew would give me nightmares for the rest of my life, assuming I lived long enough.

  I saw the bee-brain’s grimace grow wider and wider, until it gaped like a cavernous wound. Its head almost seemed to split apart like a piece of rotten fruit and, to my eternal horror, a dark cloud emerged from the depths of its gullet, streaming upwards before pooling in a buzzing mass above it.

  A cloud of bees, I saw, the sound of their swarming filling the otherwise silent street. I fought back a rush of bile in the back of my throat, and understood that the bee-brains had been more than aptly named. I turned to see a number of the creatures blocking our retreat do the same, their mouths splitting open and clouds of bees emerging from deep in their throats.

  ‘Run,’ said Nadia. ‘Go for the river!’

  I obeyed her without hesitation, dashing towards the riverside warehouses and into a narrow alley separating two of them. I heard Nadia and Oskar running to catch up, but then Lucky bounded past us, beating us all to the water’s edge.

  I heard, rather than saw, Nadia stumble in the dark, and I stopped just long enough to haul her back upright while she cursed and hissed under her breath. From the way she was holding herself, it was clear she’d twisted her ankle at the very least. She grabbed hold of my arm and held on as we both ran the rest of the way to the dock, the river’s water black under the rising moon. The far shore looked as if it was maybe thirty metres away, but at least it appeared to be deserted.

  ‘How bad is it?’ I asked Nadia. ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘Just get in the fucking water,’ she said, hobbling back from me and stripping off her heavy jacket before discarding it on the ground. She limped past me towards the edge of the dock and threw herself into the water with a loud splash.

  I could hear the buzzing of insects drawing nearer. I glanced back along the alley between warehouses, seeing the night patrol stumbling towards us, the wide black slashes of their mouths full of dreadful promise.

  Oskar and Lucky were next into the water. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and stepped off the jetty. The water was far colder than I had anticipated, so much so that my chest started to cramp from the shock. I pushed hard towards the opposite shore regardless.

  I heard Oskar shouting from somewhere close by, his voice full of panic. I came to a halt, kicking my legs to stay upright in the freezing water. I looked around until I saw him, barely visible in the moonlight, gesturing wildly towards the opposite shore.

  It wasn’t deserted any more. There were more bee-brains emerging from the shadows all along the far shore of the river. Instead of stopping at the water’s edge, they kept coming, tumbling mindlessly into the cold and brackish water in their determination to catch us. I looked back the other way, and saw that the first patrol was doing the same, tumbling and sliding off the jetty and into the water. Above the rooftops, the bulk of the nearest Hive glittered in the night.

  I remembered the map and realized that we were caught on the border between the two rival Hives. I wondered if I had the will or the courage to force myself to dive deep beneath the water and stay there until I drowned, rather than allow those things to catch me.

  ‘Go towards the bridge!’ I heard Nadia yell. ‘Towards the bridge!’

  Lucky was still powering towards the opposite shore. I saw her merge with the advancing bee-brains, her huge jaws gaping as she disappeared in a flurry of water and inhuman but vulnerable flesh.

  I looked around until I saw Nadia and swam towards her. I could see she was struggling to make any progress, but she still tried to wave me away.

  ‘Wrong way, Jerry!’ she gasped.

  ‘Not without you,’ I shouted at her, grabbing her under one arm. ‘Come on.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t make it.’

  Most of the night patrol simply sank to the bottom of the river, their limbs thrashing mindlessly, but the
rest clearly retained enough muscle memory from their previous existence to be able to swim. I thought of ants bridging a stream by climbing on the bodies of their compatriots.

  I led Nadia towards the centre of the river, keeping as far from either shore as I could as I aimed for the bridge. Oskar powered past the both of us as he, too, headed for the bridge.

  There wasn’t any sign of Lucky. I kicked hard at the water, seeing some of the stronger bee-brains were drawing uncomfortably close.

  Something grabbed at my ankle from behind and I screamed, kicking wildly until I was free. Nadia slipped from my grasp as more hands reached up from beneath, dragging her beneath the surface.

  I sucked in air and dived down to search for her, thrashing like a demon whenever I felt the hands of the creatures brush against me. I surfaced once more, gasping for air.

  I couldn’t find her.

  Oskar had continued on, oblivious to what had happened. I saw him swim towards an abutment at the base of the bridge, far from either night patrol.

  I dived down yet again, desperate to try and find Nadia, but it was impossible. I had no choice but to come up for air and follow after Oskar, who had managed to drag himself up onto the abutment. He stood on the concrete, shouting something incoherent towards me as I approached. Soon I felt the riverbed beneath my feet, and I waded towards him.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, came the sound of rapid fire, and streaks of light flashed overhead. I looked up, seeing it was coming from on top of the bridge.

  In the next moment, brilliant artificial light flooded the underside of the bridge, and I squeezed my eyes shut in the same moment that I felt a wave of intense heat sear one side of my body. When I was next able to look, the whole surface of the river was covered in flames, dozens of bodies writhing as they burned.

  ‘They found us!’ Oskar screamed. ‘They found us!’

  Light bloomed again as more napalm fire spread across the water. The wind carried the scent of burning meat towards me, and I leaned over and vomited.

  Oskar grabbed hold of my arm and dragged me towards concrete steps that led up to the street level. I followed, seeing both the jeep and the other SUV, the light from its roof-mounted kliegs directed on to the river.